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View SlideshowRequest to buy this photoCourtney Hergesheimer | DispatchSigns placed on trees lining E. North Broadway protest the left-turn lane. These trees may be cut down when the road is widened to accommodate the extra lane.

After four years of heated debate, yards of ribbons tied around trees in protest and at least
one lawsuit, a project to create a left-turn lane at N. High Street and E. North Broadway likely
will start in August.

But this is Clintonville, where no project seems to come easy. Opponents of the turn lane have
come up with at least two last-ditch efforts to delay a vote scheduled for Monday by the Columbus
City Council.

The leader of one neighborhood group has asked the city council for a comprehensive engineering
study of the intersection before proceeding. And the group’s attorney is asking the city auditor to
look into whether the city can use money from a specific capital-improvement fund for the
project.

The city council is to vote on Monday on a $308,960 contract with Decker Construction Co. to
install the turn lane from westbound E. North Broadway to southbound High Street.

Some Clintonville residents and neighborhood leaders have supported the project, saying the turn
lane will reduce traffic that now cuts through several other residential streets to travel south on
High.

“I’m happy to see a solution is this close at hand,” said Sarah Snyder, who has watched
cut-through traffic from her W. Brighton Road house for six years.

But for every supporter, there seems to be an opponent. On Wednesday, Carole Tomko, the
president of the North Broadway Street Association, wrote city council members about the
engineering study, something opponents have sought before. She also wants the city to wait because
the Clintonville Area Commission asked Columbus officials this month to create a mobility plan for
Clintonville.

Opponents fear that the project ultimately will lead to widening E. North Broadway between High
Street and Indianola Avenue, something city officials have repeatedly said they have no plans to
do. The E. North Broadway Historic District, home to large, stately houses built between 1920 and
1945, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2010. In the past, opponents have
wrapped ribbons around the huge trees along that stretch of road.According to city plans, E. North
Broadway from High Street to Broadway Place will be widened to accommodate the extra lane, and some
trees might come down.

“City council is the last, best hope for the historic and important residential corridor,” Tomko
wrote. “Without your leadership, lives will be disrupted, property values will be damaged,
pedestrian and bicycle mobility will be diminished, and we will all still be tired.”

Also last week, lawyer Phil Harmon asked Columbus officials to see whether the city can use
Urban Infrastructure Recovery Fund money for the project. The program was created in 1992 for
neighborhood-based capital-improvement projects.